By Lisa Carolin
“Changing mindsets into action” was one of the topics of the One Big Thing initiative meeting put on by the 5 Healthy Towns Foundation (5HF) last week at Silver Maples of Chelsea.
Steve Petty, CEO of 5HF, was one of the speakers and gave a history of how the One Big Thing concept came together in 2019. He said that the purpose is to respond to a common issue in the community-changing the attitude about mental health.
One of the most successful efforts has been by imagining there is an actual person, which was part of the “Who is Madison” campaign, to determine what resources are missing in the imagined case of Madison. The goals are to recognize mental health needs and challenges early, change attitudes about mental well-being, address community factors that affect mental health and substance abuse, and to prevent mental health crises.
“One Big Thing is moving forward from planning to action by expanding the partners in the conversation,” said Lori Kintz, outreach and public relations coordinator for 5HF.“Our ongoing information exchange will be housed here for three new action teams that have just been created.”
Despite the interaction that will be necessary among the three different action teams, each team sat at a separate table during the meeting to prioritize for and address different subjects related to mental health: 1.) Sense of Purpose and Isolation, 2.) Barriers to Access (having transportation and food); 3.) Alcohol and Other Substances.
Petty announced that he had applied for two grants that might allow 5HF to hire an Action Teams Coordinator.
Some of the observations made during the discussion session of the meeting included increasing the number of events in Western Washtenaw County focused on substance abuse, more restaurants offering zero proof cocktails, better addressing coping mechanisms to help youth deal with stress, and using a percentage of dollars made on alcohol/tobacco sales to better educate youth and parents about substance abuse.
One Big Thing was launched in 2019 with four partners – 5HF, Michigan Medicine/Family Medicine, Chelsea Hospital, and Washtenaw County Community Mental Health.
“These partner organizations have focused on one big thing-mental health-and how they can work together differently,” said Kintz.
